Most companies beyond the start-up phase would greatly benefit from a COO, simply because being a successful leader of operations takes a great deal of work. Just this week alone, COOs of some of my client companies have done the following:

Dealt with serious staffing issues caused by a series of completely random events, something that led to hours of meetings with staff, phone calls, discussions with advisers, etc.

Oversaw the evaluation of customer relationship management (CRM) tools that will have big impacts on the organization.

Coaching and training the professional staff to spread her subject matter expertise

Speaking at conferences

Managing relationships with his biggest customers

Overseeing due-diligence on acquisitions.

These aren’t examples created out of thin air. These are actual examples from my clients over just the past week.

Those last five items are important, growth-driving, CEO-tasks. If those CEOs were to focus any time on those four COO items, they would lose the time that they had to invest in those five CEO items. If they didn’t have someone to focus on those first four COO items and they just blew off managing them, then the infrastructure that they’re leveraging for those five CEO items would fall apart. Teams do better when they’re supervised.

In my experience, it’s not good enough to split operations. That’s the idea that a CEO doesn’t need one “expensive” COO; he can simply have two or three operations leaders reporting directly to him. The problem then is that the CEO is still in an operations-management role (i.e. he’s the COO), and so he will be robbing time from his strategic CEO work.

So, why the trend of having COOs fall out of favor in large companies? I’m just speculating, but my thoughts are:

The COO is in it for himself

In the article, a Penn State business school professor was quoted as saying that when the CEO is the idea person and the COO is the one charged with making things happen, it allows for finger-pointing.

My response to that is: “What is this, grade school?” If the COO is more concerned about his own PR campaign instead of being focused on making the CEO look like a rock star, the engagement is doomed for failure.

The CEO doesn’t know how to lead

Hey, it’s the reason why I started my business in the first place – I wanted to do my part to solve this problem. Mediocre leadership runs rampant through the business world, and a CEO who is not able to lead her COO is not going to have a good experience. This has the following impacts:

The COO is micromanaged. When this happens, it is impossible for the company to get the value it needs from the investment in a COO. CEOs need to be chief executive officers (e.g. focus on strategic items like the five CEO items above). Micromanagement is simply just avoiding the responsibility of being the CEO. That leads to little or no growth, which then leads to a bad experience.

The COO is not being reigned in. A successful COO should constantly be reporting to the CEO about what she’s done and what she’s working on. She should be 100 percent aligned to the CEO’s vision and expectations. The COO should not be going on independent operations, attempting to turn the company into her own enterprise.

The COO is incompetent or a “yes man"

Incompetence is unusual for this role — unless the CEO really stinks at people-picking. But incompetent COOs need to be removed quickly. A “yes man” is also completely worthless. CEO-COO relationships thrive when the COO is willing to argue and won’t shrink from confrontation — as long as he carries out ethical instructions when the CEO makes her final decision.

Ingar Grev is the owner of the Washington, D.C.-area franchise of The Growth Coach. A technology, leadership and strategy expert, Grev helps businesses run better through business, executive and sales coaching, strategic consulting, and interim executive services. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and holds an M.S. and MBA from the University of Maryland.